Living with Diabetes

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  • Weekend Basal

    Once my head started working today — about 8:30 — I switched over to my new “weekend” basal. This was the first time I had used it, and while I ran a bit high this morning, this afternoon, it is working very well. I’m going to tweak on it a bit more, but I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve accomplished.

    Now none of the basal experiments and new basal rates I’ve come up with are entirely new. They are based on the normal basal that my endo and his CDE have set up for me. I’ve just increased that basal by a percentage that has worked for me using my temporary basal setting.

  • Ice Day

    We are having a bout with an ice storm — temps below 30, heck below 25 most of the time — and we had rain yesterday, so most of the school districts, including mine, shut down.

    I always get irritated at the news reports — they always find some “damn yankee”, who criticizes the area for shutting down. I’ve been down here 20 years, and I have been very thankful every time we’ve shut down. My district is very conservative about shutting down — quite a few districts shut down yesterday but we didn’t. I was a bit concerned, but we got through the day, and apparently got every student home safely.

    We have had some other times when I thought we should have shut down, but we didn’t. There are some major concerns when you are a district as big as we are: quite a few of our students will not be supervised and worse yet, a bunch of them did not get lunch today. The supervision doesn’t matter with my kids, since I do high school, but it is a problem for the younger kids.

    I hate the timing, but it will work out for me. We start finals on Tuesday. I was a bit worried that I would not be able to fill all three days with review, but two days will be just fine.

    When I went into school yesterday I did two out of the three things that would make it easier for me stay if we couldn’t have gotten home. One was to leave my contacts at home and wear glasses. The other was to make sure I had enough insulin on me, and to carry an extra meal — a tuna salad package.

    The glasses thing was funny. It really bothered my ELI students more than anything. One group thought it might I was tired. The others just wanted to know. However, it did give me problems, as I have good far vision with my glasses but absolutely no near vision, and the Algebra students needed to do some graphing. I ended up leaving them to do the graphing on their own.

    When I review, I like to make sure that I work each review problem for the students and that they have recorded how to do it. I’m sure that my students won’t study, but you never know. I work very hard to make sure I do my part.

    I have to relate something funny — at least to me. They moved about 25 students out of my classes, as they were over crowded, and gave them to another teacher — the AP Calculus teacher who is VERY good at what she does.

    She came to me yesterday upset because she says the students don’t like her, and like me better and tell her that all the time. I already knew this, because they tell me that when they see me. However, I don’t think it’s personal on either side. These were students who were all working for me, and were my best students. I think if they had had her first, and had come to me, they would still feel the same way. I also am not sure that there is anything that she can do differently to change things.

  • Guardian RT

    I’ve been reading Printcrafter’s posts also, and unlike some, I’m not anxious to run out and get one.

    Unlike the pump I paid for out of pocket — I don’t see a direct benefit. First, I’m fairly hypo aware. Second, I don’t tend have any. Maybe that’s a function of being a Type 2, but the only time I seem to have lows is when I am exercising, and they are pretty easy to prevent.

    The annoyance factor looks pretty high too. The inserter is pretty nasty looking, and having that much extra bulk on the body seems annoying too.

    For someone like me, I think having the ability to wear something like that for a week at a time, and then return it to the doctor’s office would be the best model. I know that the doctor’s office has the gold version, but I think it would be more useful to be able to see what is going on.

    I’d love to borrow one for a few days to learn how to deal with some specific meals. I still don’t do pizza well at all, and I also have trouble with Mexican meals.

  • Interesting Study, and very sad

    I went to insulin early, and have never regretted it. Frankly, I have had better control and freedom. It’s even more true since I went to the pump.

    Resistance to Insulin Therapy Among Patients and Providers

    Patient and provider attitudes differ significantly across countries, controlling for individual characteristics. Patients rate the clinical efficacy of insulin as low and would blame themselves if they had to start insulin therapy. Self-blame is significantly lower among those who have better diet and exercise adherence and less diabetes-related distress.

  • Workshop Experiments

    I set up a new basal rate and adjusted it last night for workshops.

    Basically I’ve found that using the temp basal at 50%+ helps, but there is a problem with temporary basals. For one, you can accidently turn them off and I’ve done that.

    I’ve set up the extra basal and I switched over to it last night. I plan to switched back to the normal basal tonight and have the Treo programmed to remind me.

    Here’s the good news. I ate breakfast at 7:15 and I just checked and my blood sugar is at 146, definately within the parameters I’ve set.

    Four hours after eating and my blood sugar is 122 which is extremely good. So far everything is working well.

    I left the workshop with a blood sugar reading of 117. A major victory! Hopefully repeatable.

  • Met another pumper!

    One of the fun thingss about this weekend is that on Saturday, I met a pumper.

    He was diagnosed at 3 and was put on his first pump at 8, I think. So he doesn’t remember not being diabetic, and barely remembers not being on a pump.

    It was awesome to meet someone who understood what I was going through, especially the physical sympthoms of being high and being low.

    At the same time, we have a really different set of experiences. I am still really new to the pumping world. There are a lot of things I don’t do well yet — agility is one of them.

    But it was really need to met someone with the common experiments.

  • Met another pumper!

    One of the fun thingss about this weekend is that on Saturday, I met a pumper.

    He was diagnosed at 3 and was put on his first pump at 8, I think. So he doesn’t remember not being diabetic, and barely remembers not being on a pump.

    It was awesome to meet someone who understood what I was going through, especially the physical sympthoms of being high and being low.

    At the same time, we have a really different set of experiences. I am still really new to the pumping world. There are a lot of things I don’t do well yet — agility is one of them.

    But it was really need to met someone with the common experiments.

  • Agility Videos

    Here are videos from our agility weekend. The first is a fun match, the next three are our clean runs, and the last is our “goof”.

    http://tinyurl.com/84hk4

  • Agility Videos

    Here are videos from our agility weekend. The first is a fun match, the next three are our clean runs, and the last is our “goof”.

    http://tinyurl.com/84hk4

  • Post Agility

    My bolus rates aren’t working as well as they were last week. I’ve been consistently high after each meal. 163 after lunch.

    I think it is really interesting, and sort of in a way, documented in the book “Pumping Insulin”, that the more insulin you use the more you need, and vice versa. Since I went 3 days with using 50 units a day, it is going to take a few days for my body to adjust downward to the 30 units a day rate, especially since I have a workshop tomorrow, and I’ll probably using about 40 units that day.